This is the Environment Show. It's about our stewardship of the Earth and the beauty
and mystery of life in all its forms. I'm Peter Burley.
Coming up, horseshoe crabs, ancient beasts that look like lumpy helmets with tails, they
make IV drugs possible in nourished birds that migrate from Argentina, despite their
inculcubable worth, we're wiping them out. Americans and Mexicans are finding ways to
clean the air in El Paso and Juarez. New bricks and old cars are part of the solution.
We look at the northern lights and colored glaciers of the Canadian Arctic from the deck of Alva
Simon's small boat. And on the Earth calendar, organic soybeans are being combined in Ohio.
It's part of the Great American Harvest. These stories and more coming up on the Environment
Show.
You're listening to the Environment Show, and I'm Peter Burley. The dog is man's best friend,
right? Well, according to Bill Hall, a marine education specialist at the University of
Delaware's Sea Grant Program, man's best friend is actually the horseshoe crab.
Hall says this prehistoric creature has saved the lives of countless humans and plays
an important role in marine ecosystems. The horseshoe crab populations along the eastern
seaboard of the United States, however, have declined rapidly in recent years. While
some states have taken measures to help the animal, environmentalists say one particular
state has not taken the steps needed to protect the creature. The Environment Show's Stephen
Westcott has more.
Scientists say the horseshoe crab is actually more closely related to spiders and scorpions
than other crabs. At about two feet in length and weighing ten pounds, it looks like a helmet
with a tail. Dr. Carl Schuster is adjunct professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine
Science at William & Mary College.
They all have those three parts of the body. The horseshoe shaped front part, the mid part,
they sort of triangulate and then along spike, talc and their tail, then they go back upwards
of four hundred million years.
Experts say the number of horseshoe crabs is declining, especially in the coastal waters
of Delaware Bay. Bill Hall with a college of marine studies at the University of Delaware
and education specialist with the Sea Grant Office organizes surveys of the animals in New
Jersey and Delaware.
We'd look at the spawning adults on the beach, so it's not really a total population count,
but the spawning adults have decreased probably in the 80-90% range since 1990. The reason is
that they are being harvested for actually several fisheries. They're used for bait for
yield and cock and lobsters and pet fish.
Female horseshoe crabs can have thousands of eggs which are used by fishermen to catch
other marine life. Hundreds of thousands of horseshoe crabs are caught by mid-Atlantic
commercial fishermen each year. Besides bait, the blood of many horseshoe crabs is used
by the pharmaceutical industry. It contains a unique clotting agent used to test for bacteria,
according to Bill Hall.
An accused to test drugs, particularly all-intervenous drugs for purity, as well as prosthesis. Any kind
of artificial product we make that has to on the body. Whether it be something simple
as a tooth or hip replacement or shoulder replacement, all those have to be tested using
the Horseshoe crab blood which is very sensitive to gram negative bacteria which causes many
diseases. For example, the man can get like spinal meningitis and some others.
Hall says no IV drug reaches your hospital pharmacy without a Torshoe crab test which makes
this crab industry huge. Some estimate the biomedical Horseshoe crab industry to be worth
$50 million and the bait industry worth $40 million annually. All of these horses are
contributing to the declining number of Horseshoe crabs.
Bill Hall says the problem is that unlike other fish species, they do not reach sexual maturity
for some time.
The interesting thing about the animal is the recent received pressure or doesn't receive
pressure well is that it takes it anywhere from 10 in the case of females to 11 years to
mature. So anytime you have an animal which takes this long to mature, it can be
overfished really quickly.
This means that a lot of Horseshoe crabs are caught before they have the chance to reproduce
which quickly depletes their numbers. In the spring female Horseshoe crabs migrate out
of the ocean to the sandy shores of Delaware and Chesapeake Bayes to lay eggs. The eggs
are laid in the sand to incubate. Crabbs used to be so numerous on the beach that they
would stack up on top of each other creating layers of crabs. Their gooey eggs were everywhere
which served as food for hungry birds and fish. Again, Professor Schuster with William and
Mary College.
They're eggs a fed upon by small fish, tidewater minors, and this young fish sizes of larger
species such as the rockfish or striped bass as we call it. The area where they have
been most prominent and been most advertised is the fact that the migratory shorebirds that
leave South America in the springtime and fly nonstop mainly to Delaware Bay to feed on
the eggs, that is the major story.
Professor Schuster is referring to a bird called the Red Naut which migrates all the way
from Argentina to the Canadian Arctic. Tens of thousands of knots spelled KNOT stop along the
Atlantic coastline to refuel on Horseshoe crab eggs. Ornithologists worry that a reduction in
Horseshoe crabs will threaten wildlife including the knots that need the eggs to complete their migration.
Delaware Bayes reportedly the second largest shorebird migration staging area in the world.
Thus entire species could be threatened if food is not there for birds passing through.
In addition, birdwatchers contribute millions of dollars to a huge tourism industry in the
mid-Atlantic states, and some fear that a reduction of Horseshoe crabs could mean a reduction
in bird populations which could harm the economy. In an effort to protect Horseshoe crab populations,
the states of New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware have implemented harvest limits.
But according to Perry Plumart, spokesman for the National Autobahn Society,
one key state has yet to limit takes.
Virginia traditionally had no Horseshoe crab landings in their state. It was very low around 25,000
crabs. But as a result of the actions taken by the other state, fishermen now landed
crabs in Virginia that would be illegal to land in the other states, creating a loophole and
Virginia and I'll become the loophole state. The Virginia Marine Resources Commission
adopted a regulation essentially codifying that loophole. Horseshoe crabs that are illegal to land
elsewhere are illegal to land elsewhere, illegal to land in Virginia. It's undermining the
conservation efforts of the rest of the mid-Atlantic.
The National Autobahn Society and others are lobbying Virginia's governor and the state's
Marine Resources Commission to adopt landing limits. Also, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries
Commission, an oversight body that could step in and protect the Horseshoe crab has yet to take action.
National Autobahn's Perry Plumart says the Commission has shirked its responsibility.
He says he hopes the Commission or Virginia's leaders will look at the science and economics
and realize that landing limits for Horseshoe crabs are in the best interest of humans,
as well as the other species that rely on this ancient creature to survive.
For the Environment Show, I'm Stephen Westcott.
The view from the past, the place that gave El Paso Texas its name, is frequently obscured by
smog and dust. On a clear day, a megalopolis is at your feet, bisected by the Rio Grande River,
with El Paso on one side and COD Juarez, Mexico, on the other.
The city is lying a great basin in the hills which collects the air in that hot,
dry and dusty land. The track for the past was beaten centuries ago by men on horseback,
making the journey from Mexico City to Spanish settlements on the California coast.
The air must have been better then before the days of copris melders,
autobiles, power plants and heavy industry. In modern times, El Paso has not met the environmental
protection agencies' health-based air quality standards. But today, a combination of
imaginative strategies driven by a cooperative citizen effort has reversed the trend and the
air is getting cleaner. One source of dust are the brick kilns in Juarez.
Bob Curry, from the center of environmental resource management at the University of Texas
and El Paso, takes us straight to the fire. Well, if you look at the Mexican brick-making industry,
it's really a cottage industry and the process is almost biblical. Put the Adobe into bricks,
stack it up, put it into an open-sided kiln and fire it up with anything that will burn.
For a number of years, it was just that, anything that will burn. In recent years, we've encouraged
the brick makers and shown them that they can use less polluting fuels, sought us and would rather
than tires that they did several years ago. Recently, a professor from New Mexico state named
Antonio Lada. And one of his graduate students, Robert Marquez, designed a kiln that is easy to
construct and filters out a lot of the dust. The old kilns consist of four walls. They're open at
the top. Bricks are piled inside and the fire is lit underneath them and burned until the bricks
are dry. Curry says a roof and a second compartment had been added. For the new one, it's kind of like
two dome chambers, two small rooms with domes on them. And no smoke stack. The smoke is funneled out
from the emissions from the one that's firing. It's funneled into a underground chamber of clay
and into a second kiln where the heat is captured before it's discharged and before the emissions are
discharged into the atmosphere. Use of the new kilns has grown out of an earlier failed initiative
to convince the brick bankers to burn propane, which is a clean fuel instead of old tires.
The effort collapsed due to the high cost of the gas and the infrastructure which it requires.
Alan Blackman, a fellow at Resources for the Future, an environmental think tank,
has been monitoring El Paso and its efforts to enforce clean air laws. He says brick bankers are
members of strong community organizations and unions, and a lot of effort was spent on educational
programs about the health impact of breathing smoke from the kilns.
In the air shed basin, American firms can frequently bring about larger improvements in air quality
by taking action in Mexico than by modifying their own plants. Again, Bob Curry.
To Texas Legislature Past, a measure that allows for supplemental environmental projects across the
border, if we can quantify and show that the improvements are going to be made, Texas will allow
them to take place across the border. Right now, Chevron has got a $2 million set open and they're
going to do what you call a cash for clunkers program where they're going to buy old vehicles and
get them off the road. As I understand it right now, they're considering buying vehicles from
Mexico. Also being considered, or proposals for El Paso Industries to pay to paved streets and
Juarez is a means of reducing dust. Cleaning up the air in El Paso Juarez is a particular challenge
because laws and regulatory structures differ between the US and Mexico. Greg Cook,
regional administrator for the US Environmental Protection Agency for Texas Arkansas, Louisiana,
Oklahoma, New Mexico says an independent committee comprised of citizens and governmental officials
from both countries was responsible for putting a plan together. First of all, El Paso and Siadad Juarez
are in a basin that shares surrounded by mountains, so it's one air basin. Therefore, the air
shed between El Paso and Mexico is the same. And obviously, US laws don't control in Mexico.
But several years ago, we formed a joint advisory committee that came out of the El Paso del Norte
Task Force, which has both Mexican and American officials to examine air contamination issues
on both sides of the border. As a result of that, there has been a variety of very helpful measures
that have been taken place, including speeding traffic over the international bridges to reduce the
number of cars or idling on the bridges. And a number of other issues, including changing fuels
in Mexico, that I think have had a great contributing effort in El Paso del Norte, both sides of the
border, to helping clean up the air. The end result has been a healthier environment.
We've actually, for much of the criteria pollutants such as carbon monoxide and ozone,
we've actually had a net decrease in the air contaminants over the air shed. In fact,
based on last year's numbers, we would act the El Paso area would actually be in a team for ozone,
something the other larger metropolitan areas in Texas cannot claim. So there has been
dramatic measurable difference from the monitors in cleaning up the air shed.
That was Greg Cook, US EPA Regional Administrator for Region 6, which includes El Paso Texas.
The Environment Show is a national production. It's made possible by the W.
Walton Jones Foundation, the William Bingham Foundation, the Turner Foundation, the J.
M. Kaplan Fund, and Heming's Motor News, the monthly Bible of the Collector Car Hobby,
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Our comment line here in the Environment Show can be reached at 1-888-49-Green. That's 1-888-49-Green.
Leave us your comments if they make sense. We'll broadcast them. If not, we might broadcast them anyway.
We all have places that are special to us, for some it's a city street, for others it's deep in the wilderness.
For author Alva Simon, it's autumn at Tay Bay in the eastern Canadian Arctic, where balls of
fire punctuate the night. In 1994, Simon and his wife found an island a hundred miles from the
nearest village, where they saw color in the sea on the shore and in the sky. In this portrait of
place, Simon reads from his book North to the Night, a spiritual odyssey in the Arctic.
When we felt ready, we turned our attention outward to the bold beauty of Tay Bay.
Tyroly and Peaks towered above us on three sides. Razor Ridge's ran from both Port and
Starbred toward the bow and the head of the bay. There the summits rose even higher.
Each was isolated by shimmering delta-like fingers at the terminus of an 18-mile long,
three mile wide winding river of ice called Inusalak glacier. Each summit was crowned in white.
Each mountain waste exposed a belt of black broken scree. Each foot was skirted with a mint green
or aqua-blue glacier. They stretched inland as far as the eye could see, forming the western end
of the biomartan range. From the north, another glacier ran perpendicularly into the bay,
being forced into a final sharp turn by a twisty rocky canyon. The outer edges of the curving
glacier was serrated by a hundred foot sheer ice walls, each at a slightly different angle to
the sun. Like a faceted jewel, these edges spread the soft sunlight through the limits of its
color spectrum. All this granite drama fell steeply onto rolling rocky coastal plains.
Although by then sparse of plant life, these plains somehow sustain a blessed litany of wildlife,
lemming hair, fox, wolvering, caribou, tarmigan, snowy owl, raven, gearfalken, old squas,
eye-derducks, and snow geese. Near the boat-slip fat seals, bearded ringed occasionally hooded in
herp. Outside in navy-board inland, orca, narwhal, beluga, and walrus worked the deep waters
until freeze up. We hiked the burnt orange hills, stopping to run our hands over wall-sized palettes
of rock, painted with the flaky lichen. They looked like old Dutch masterpieces. We measured the
patches diameter from thumb to little finger, and counted back in time the hundred years required
for each inch of lichen growth. As we became familiar with each valley look out peak, pond, bay,
hummack, or lone rock. We christened them. Our icebergs became the chicken and fat frog. notable
stones became fox rock and the thinker. A rolling stretch of tundra we dubbed tarmigan hills.
We scanned the distant horizon of haunting wilderness, knowing that on this planet of more than
five billion people, as far as the eye could see, there were but two. As the sun skidded beneath
the southern rims, we lingered on deck to absorb the new hues of amber, crimson, lilac, and lime.
Waking, we went out into the lengthening night, and the hope of being graced with the real
greatest shell on earth, the northern lights. Our languages intersect when trying to communicate
the subtle complexities of ice and snow. So too did I find our tropical to temperate adjectives
unable to tame this Arctic light. It roams the skies and fluid flux. It will not hold still for our
eyes or cameras much less our pens. Sun dogs race to the four directions of the solar winds,
becoming bloody crucifixes ringed in halo. Mountains stand on their heads in the sky. Fireballs of light
roll along like tumbleweed. One of us would hurriedly call to the other to look, but by the time
Diana or I had turned, it would be gone. We carefully explained what we saw. It was important that
the other understood. Diana said, I am not crazy, Alva. It was a ball of fire, and it rolled off the
cliffs on the board inside and shot across the inlet, and over that hill and passed the boat,
getting bigger and bigger. Then it just disappeared. Say you believe me. Through two years of frantic
preparation, three months of hard travel, and the hurly burly of preparing ourselves for the winter,
Diana had lived with the constant fear that we would find ultimately the last unknown,
either we would not. Perhaps the tax one emotion means to addrify another because we had drifted
apart into politeness. But now settled and secure, we shared a warmth as intimate as we had ever known.
That was author Alva Simon, reading from his book, North to the Night, A Spiritual Odyssey in the Arctic.
It's published by Broadway Books.
And now it's time for the Earth calendar. It's the time of year when organic soybeans are being
brought in in Ohio. It's part of the Great American Harvest. Sam West owns a 135 acre farm in South
Central Ohio, about 60 miles east of Cincinnati and 60 miles south of Columbus.
Sam uses a combine to harvest the 35 acres of soybeans.
Well, it's a fairly good size apparatus. It's got a sickle bar across the friend of it and
the real and a bite's out into the country in harvest time. I'm sure seen one.
Harvest runs at 12 foot swath in it. The material goes to a cylinder where the grain is
shelled out and then it's fanned a lot and shook a lot and the shaft hopefully goes out the
back and the soy beans grew up in the band. The organic soy beans are dried,
trucked to a cleaning facility and marketed to Japan where they are used to make tofu.
However, this year's drought has hurt Sam's crops so much that the beans will be sold for livestock
feed at a substantially reduced price. Yeah, it's an extreme like four that I guess be the
the word for it right in this area. Now this is not everywhere. You can go 10 miles one direction
and it may get a little worse. It don't get much worse in right here and to go 10 miles
another way it gets really good maybe but we were just unfortunate this year and weren't blessed
with the rain. West has no irrigation system and even the creek that runs through his farm went
dry this year something that hasn't happened in 35 years. Sam plants is organic soybeans in May
and by harvest time the plants have broad leaves and usually stand about waist high. He grows clear
highland organic soybeans as opposed to black-eyed or some other variety. Since he is an organic
farmer West uses no chemicals to protect his crop from disease and pests. He says growing soybeans
is hard work. One of the main differences between organic farmer and or other farmer is what we do
is a whole lot more labor intense. We don't get this little can of something and go out there and
try to fix something and when weeds come up we have to pull them or go through with cultivators
but after we plant we rotary hoe it two three times, cultivate two or three times and then we walk
the fields and pull up the weeds and we're messed by hand and when they're get so we can't pull them
up we take a corn knife and cut them off of which we do about all summer long. West has been growing
soybeans since 1988 and was certified as organic in the early 1990s while he has not acquired a
taste for tofu. Sam says he enjoys eating soybeans right off the plant during harvest time.
There are rich source of protein. Today the United States reportedly grows one third of the world
supply even though they were not introduced here until the earlier part of this century. The Chinese
on the other hand have known of their value as a food source for centuries. The soybean has been
part of that culture since before 2800 BC. I like farmer West personally and not fond of tofu
but perhaps in another 2800 years I can acquire the taste. You're listening to the environment show
and I'm Peter Burley.
You're listening to the environment show and I'm Peter Burley. Still ahead. We talk green with
three physicians about the environment and children's health. It turns out the kids and cities
receive some of the highest doses of pesticides. In the first half of the program we heard about
El Paso, Texas which in cooperation with its Mexican neighbor is working to clean the air.
In Pittsburgh air quality is unsatisfactory and a big part of the problem comes from Ohio and West
Virginia where Pittsburgh finds there is little cooperation. Stay with us.
We are talking green and I'm Peter Burley. Our discussion today has to do with environmental issues
that strike close to home and affect just about every American family. Specifically we want to
look at environmental conditions that bear on children's health and children's development.
With me are three doctors who are recognized as some of the most knowledgeable experts in the field.
We welcome them to the show. Dr. Phil Landrigan, he's director and chairman of the Department of
Community and Preventive Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Dr. Bernard Weiss,
he's professor of Environmental Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Rochester Medical
School in Rochester, New York. And Dr. Bill Suk, he's director of program development at the
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and he is in research triangle North Carolina.
Welcome to all of you and I'd like to start with you Dr. Landrigan. We've just come out of a hot
summer which means smog and air pollution to a lot of people and I presume also asthma for many
children. What is the relationship or what do we know about children's asthma and air pollution?
Well Peter, asthma is certainly caused by many factors and air pollution is among them.
We know that ozone in air, we know that oxides of nitrogen and fine particulates each by itself
and also together, configure attacks of asthma. Of course these factors interact with other factors
as well. For example a child's genetic background and problems in indoor air in the apartment where
the child might live. Dr. Weiss, have we found that the environmental conditions that we now live with
make it worse than perhaps was the case when some of us were growing up?
The closest link with asthma in indoor air is with paternal smoking. It becomes a very costly problem
because of the treatment for asthma and also because of the way it impairs other aspects of the patient's
lives such as the number of days they go to school. Dr. Suker, there are other environmental
aspects to the asthma question that we need to be thinking about? I think that one of the big issues
as I see it anyway is to try to understand why instances and mortality rates are increased
more rapidly in urban minority children for example than in other sectors of society.
I think this goes to the larger issues of susceptibility as well as indoor and outdoor pollution.
Help us with that a little bit. Sure. When you say urban minority children, is this also a function
of income? Most probably. I'm not an economist. I was not thinking about that. I'm assuming that
these people tend to be at the lower end of the income scale in many urban communities and so
really is poverty also. I think it's a common question. Peter, of several factors. One issue is that
in urban area where asthma rates have doubled in the past decade, you have disproportionate placement
of polluting industries, disproportionate location of highways that release a lot of pollutants
to the air and then that's coupled with the fact that the children who live in those areas
unfortunately don't have the same access to medical care as children in the wealthiest suburbs.
In New York City for example just last month we reported that between the richest and the poorest
census tracts within the five boroughs there is a 21 fold that's a 2,100% difference
in asthma hospitalization rates between the wealthiest and the poorest communities within New York City.
If we look at this and be interested in all of your views on this, is this kind of
affliction? One that is on the rise or overall is it stable or going down?
It's on the rise. About 600 kids a year die from asthma or asthma related illnesses. I think
that that's pretty significant. There is about 150,000 kids who are hospitalized and it's still
just pointed out. Majorities, a gross majority of these children are coming into emergency
room situations in a city environment and I think that puts it overdue burden on healthcare
and on hospitals in general. The relationship between poverty and health ramifies all over the
spectrum of medicine. For example Dr. Landrigan and I have both been very interested in the
relationship between exposure to toxic substances that affect brain development and IQ.
We know that in minority or disadvantaged communities the average IQ is perhaps 15 points
slower than it is in disadvantaged communities. Here are the implications. First of all,
you find a high proportion of the kids in these communities who have IQs below 70,
which mandates remedial attention and education and costs a lot more. In addition, we also know
that there is a relationship between IQ and earnings that is over a lifetime, a working lifetime.
One IQ point is worth something like $10,000. Multiply that by the number of kids and disadvantaged
communities over their working lifetime and it turns out to be an enormous sum. EPA in fact calculated
on the basis of IQ that the benefits of the clean air act as specifically the removal of
lead from gasoline led to savings or benefits based on IQ alone of a trillion dollars.
You've pointed out that these IQ numbers are related to the income levels in the communities.
Is there a similar data that would link them to the exposure to toxic in these communities?
Absolutely. Now I'll have the experience of several decades of studies with lead.
We know that there's a clear relationship between lead exposure and IQ that is you reduce
lead exposure and you elevate IQ. In addition to lead, which is something that I think a lot of
people are familiar with, there are 75,000 new chemicals, as I understand it, that have
hit the environment since World War II. Do we know much about the exposures to these other
chemicals, again in poorer communities as they were in comparison to more affluent ones?
Well, there's an awful lot we don't know. Peter, one of the problems here is that several good
national studies have shown that fewer than half of these chemicals have ever been tested for
their potential to cause toxicity and fewer than 20 percent have ever been tested specifically
to see whether or not they cause injury to the young toxicity to development.
That creates a real-style problem because it means that every day in our cities and in our
towns across the whole country, all of us and our children in particular are being exposed to
chemicals whose toxic potential we simply do not know. A colleague of ours said Dr. Herb Needleman
at the University of Pittsburgh has likened this to conducting a vast toxicologic experiment
in which, like it or not, we're using our children, our children's children as the experimental subjects.
I'll tell you, a classic chemical that's a particular concern in this whole realm is pesticides.
We now know that the heavy issues of pesticides, at least on the east coast of the United States,
is in cities. In New York State, for example, the two counties that use the most pesticides in the
entire state are Manhattan and Brooklyn. And the pesticides are applied here in enormous
quantities to control cockroaches and rats, another vermin in apartments.
I think that would surprise a lot of our listeners.
It was a shocking finding and just became known within the past few months.
And to make that clear, it's the fellow who shows up with a can to get the spray or apartment
who is really bringing, as you said, more pesticides in than any other form of exposure at this point.
Yeah, there's more pesticides used, at least on the east coast. I wouldn't want to say for agricultural
areas in the Midwest, or the Pacific coast, but at least on the east coast, the heavy issues of
pesticides in the entire state is in New York City. For persons who are worried about this,
what does the person who rents an apartment and a building that is regularly sprayed by the
landlord need to know and need to say to protect their children?
Well, the first thing they need to find out is what's being used. Some of these chemicals have
the potential to be toxic to the fetus, to cause loss of cells in the developing brain of a
fetus or a young infant. And most notorious in this regard is a chemical called chloropyrifos,
which is the single most heavily used pesticide in urban areas. So people in an apartment need to
know what's going on and they need to be prepared to speak out and to try to control unnecessarily
heavy applications. Peter, in 1993, the National Academy of Sciences published a report
called Pesticides and the Dives of Infants and Children. The Committee that wrote the report
pointed out that children are not simply little adults, that they are especially vulnerable
because the developing organism is going through an extraordinarily complex process that can easily be
interfered with. The report by the National Academy of Sciences led to the passage of the 1996
Food Quality Protection Act. The Food Quality Protection Act based on the early report and based
on a survey of what happens to children asks for an extra tenfold safety factor in our standards
for exposure. They also ask that more careful attention be paid to in utero exposures and to the
equivalent of a fact of pesticides and substances with the same motive action. And they also ask for
standards to be based on aggregate exposure that is food and water and skin. So our standards
are very peculiar. They're based on standard toxicological testing with rodents in a very
clean laboratory. And in essence, we don't take account of all the other sources of exposure
that am ten John Children. And in fact, my understanding is that EPA has now begun a review of
literally thousands of chemicals to see whether new levels should be established.
And I gather that process is slow and coming. Will it help? Do you think the way they're doing it
will give us better standards and safer standards when it's all over? Well, it's been a bit slow
but it is very definitely moving in the right direction. Administrator Carol Browner, the head of
EPA has just removed from the market methylparathion, which is one of the pesticides that's most
highly toxic to children and they're actively considering restricting the use of other pesticides.
They've got a long ways to go on. It's a difficult arena in which to work, but they are making
headway. One thing that I think would be helpful is to get some understanding of how concerned
parents need to be. Obviously, we've got a lot of new information. Is this something that really
they need to let us leap over? Or are we seeing a situation that we understand a little better,
but indeed, isn't any worse than perhaps other people were exposed to when they grew up?
I think one of the problems is that we are all inundated with all kinds of information.
And the question is, which is more valid than the next? And that's a hard thing for a parent to do.
I have two kids. I have a daughter who's nine and a son who's six and a half. And I would say that
I'm probably pretty diligent about what they are exposed to, but at the same time, you can't
keep them from harm all the time. And I think that one of the hardest things to deal with
is exactly what you're saying. And that is the amount of information and how do you separate out
what's real from what's not. I think the thing that parents have to keep in mind is that what we're
really talking about for the most part, as you pointed out, is that there was 75, I think you use
the number 75,000 chemical sends World War II. For the most part, we are all exposed to
fairly low levels of concentration on a day-to-day basis, but repeatedly and chronically over a long
period of time. And if you believe the fact that, as I do, that a child is a developing organism,
they have a longer shelf life than everybody else. Consequently, if you are I or exposed to
a high level of chemicals or exposed to a certain amount of lead at our stage of development,
it's going to have a far less impact, a far less effect, than on children. Many of the things
that we've been discussing have long-range health consequences that in some cases may not appear
until much, much later in life. Given that situation and looking at our public policy as it relates
to pesticides and other environmental threats, are we doing enough to protect future generations?
Well, we need to do better testing of chemicals before we unleash them on the market, pesticides
and all other chemicals. That's a very important necessity. And secondly, we have to review
standards that currently are out there. We have to do, we have to do such reviews more rapidly
and efficiently that we're now doing and adjust those standards so that they protect children.
NIEHS does a lot of research and I am a firm believer that if you can understand and get a basis
of understanding as to how chemicals work and how systems work, how neurodevelopmental,
neuroendocrinological systems work, how reproductive systems work and understand the impact of those
agents on these cell and organ systems, then you can develop new, better ways of preventing exposure
and modulate reducing risk of exposure. I think we have to take a wider view of what toxicity means.
We have to think about how children's activities raise the level of exposures. We have to think about
what happens over the lifetime and we have to think about the relationship between other parts of
the environment, such as the family's economic status and its interaction with exposure to toxic
substances. I want to thank my guests. We've been talking about children and the environment and
health. Our guests have been Dr. Phil Landrigan from Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. Dr. Bernard
Weiss, who is from the University of Rochester Medical School in Rochester, New York, and Dr. Bill
Suk, who is from the National Institute of Environmental Services in Research Triangle Park, North
Carolina. I'm sure that they have said things that have stimulated questions or comment from you,
so we'd like to hear from you. Our number is 1-888-49-green. We've been talking green and I'm Peter
Burlite.
You can reach us here on the Environment Show via email. It's green at wamc.org.
Regular mail is the Environment Show. 318 Central Avenue, Albany, New York 1-2-2-06.
That's 318 Central Avenue, Albany, New York 1-2-2-06.
As you have just heard, poor air quality and pollution threaten the health of our children.
One big issue of concern is smog, and this summer's hot temperatures have contributed to
increased levels of smog in a number of cities, including Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Even though many
of the industrial plants and smokestacks that polluted the city are gone, the city is not in
compliance with clean air health standards. Environmentalists and city officials have tried to
address the issue, however the cause may be beyond their reach. Part of the problem comes from
utility plants that lie west of the city and outside of Pennsylvania. Lisa Phillips reports.
Outside the East Liberty offices of gasp, the group against smog and pollution,
construction crews clear a block of land for new home depot. It's a sign of Pittsburgh's
changing economy and changing environment. More retail and high tech businesses
mean fewer moments like the one that inspired the group's director Sue Ceepe to become an
environmental activist back in the 60s. Ceepe says when she looked out her window in those days,
she couldn't even see the yard next door. I'd see a belching stack in the distance, and slowly
I got mad at this. I really didn't know much about air pollution. I hadn't thought about it much.
But I was really getting angry and fearful really about what I was seeing around me.
Even though there aren't as many of those smokestacks in the city skyline now,
there's still pollution and Ceepe is still an activist. Ozone, an invisible,
odorless compound which can aggravate asthma and damage lungs, is now one of her main targets.
And her battleground doesn't stop at the city's borders or the states.
The plants that are to our west are somewhat dirtier and in many cases much dirtier than the plants
in the eastern corridor. Because the ozone is so bad in the eastern corridor that the states have
gotten together to try to do something about it. And they have reduced ozone from power plants.
And this has been the genesis for complaints against the upwind, western, and southern states whose
pollutants are drifting into the eastern corridor states. The eastern states are in the ozone
transport region, which requires scrubbers and other controls on industrial sites to keep ozone
increasing emissions down. The region and its rules end at the state line. Joe Pezi,
who's in charge of local air quality issues for the state department of environmental protection,
says its time midwestern states did their fair share. We feel that the playing field should be
leveled in those other states should be required to make the same reductions that were being
required of here in Pennsylvania. The environmental protection agency is trying to make that happen
by targeting nitrogen oxides, a major ingredient in ozone formation. EPA Air Control Specialist Marcia
Spink says the nitrogen oxides state implementation plan, known as the NOX SIP call,
sets a maximum emission rate for every large coal, gas, or oil boiler in the ozone transport
region and nine other states in the Midwest and South. When they ran the computer model that said,
what if every large boiler met that rate? It removed the contribution from any state contributing to
another state's air pollution control problem for ozone. The difference between the uncontrolled
NOX emissions in a state and what the emissions would be in that state, if they met this emission
rate, that became the required reduction for that state. But the Midwest ozone group made up of
electric utilities, industry groups, and state and local governments upwind of Pennsylvania is
fighting the NOX SIP call. The group charges that the dangers of ozone drift are exaggerated.
Spokesman Dave Flannery says it's unfair to make areas that don't have high ozone levels
pay for places that do. The kinds of controls EPA is trying to impose through that action would
set what amounts to an arbitrary level of emission reductions by imposing a one-size-fits-all solution
on all sources in 22 states. And what's concerned, the concern is about that, is that it places
those controls on sources without asking the question of whether those sources are adversely
impacting air quality. So the result is that we see the same level of emission control on a power
plant located in downtown Boston on the one hand and the same level of control on a power plant
located in rural Alabama on the other. The EPA's Marsha Spink says the per boiler emission rate was
used to set goals for ozone reduction, but these goals vary from state to state and states can achieve
them as they see fit. She adds the less populated areas of the Midwest do have less ground-level
ozone, but that's because emissions are sent up and away. You may call them a rural area based
upon population, but the fact is that the large power plant is sitting in this area which may not be
a city, but its emissions are crossing over state lines and causing people in downwind states to
breathe air that doesn't meet a health-based standard simply because they have these tall stacks.
So in other words, they built these stacks so that the pollution doesn't come down to ground level
to hurt the citizens near where the power plant's located, but it is harming citizens downwind.
Harold Miller, who heads the Southwest Pennsylvania Growth Alliance, is unhappy that Ohio and West Virginia,
just a short drive away from Pittsburgh, don't have to follow the same costly environmental
regulations that Pennsylvania has to, but he says the problem could be solved by making the whole
country do what the ozone transport region states have to. I agree with the basic principles that
EPA should be forcing the states upwind to impose strict control on NOx production than they are
right now. What level they do it at is a different issue. And I think that what makes sense is to start
with a level which is equivalent to what other areas are our areas doing right now, not force both
us and upwind states to go to levels that nobody has been doing in the past and that may not even be
economically achievable before we learn exactly what the effective effect is of less stringent controls.
Whatever plan the EPA comes up with to take care of ozone from the Midwest will have to make it through
a sticky legal web. Pennsylvania is taking the agency to court for failing to do enough to protect it
from upwind states. The Midwest ozone group is doing the same to stop the NOx SIP call the agency's
current plan for doing so from taking effect. Oral arguments in U.S. District Court will begin in
November. For the Environment Show, I'm Lisa Phillips.
Thanks for being with us in this week's Environment Show. I'm Peter Burlead. Environmental factors that affect
our health. The survival of the horseshoe crap, Mexican bricks, organic soybeans, pesticides that
our children ingest, and air and Pittsburgh. Order a copy of this show before you take another
IV drug or inhale another breath. Call 1-800-323-9262. It's show number 507.
The Environment Show is a national production which is solely responsible for its content.
Alan Sharktalk is executive producer, Steven Westcott is producer,
and the Environment Show is made possible by the W. Alton Jones Foundation, the William Bingham
Foundation, the Turner Foundation, the J.M. Kaplan Fund, and Heming's Motor News, the monthly
Bible of the collector, CarHobby, www.HEMMINGS.com. Be good to the earth and join us next week for the
Environment Show.
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